Anyone who traveled with Deutsche Bahn in July needed strong nerves again: For the second time in a row, less than 60 percent of long-distance trains ran on time last month, as the group announced on Friday.
Only 59.9 percent of the journeys reached their destination at the scheduled time. In the previous month, the worst value since 2010 was reached at 58 percent. This means that the clear downward trend since the beginning of the year has come to a halt for the time being. However, the company is a long way from the punctuality target of an average of 80 percent in the current year that was once proclaimed and has long since been collected.
“Continued intensive construction activity throughout the DB network and the very high utilization of the trains and the central rail routes are currently having a strong impact on punctuality,” said the railway on Friday. The group counts a long-distance train as punctual as long as it does not arrive at its destination more than six minutes late.
High sick leave
Not only long-distance trains are affected. In regional transport, too, travelers and employees currently have to endure a lot. Punctuality there slipped to well below 90 percent in June – a particularly low figure for this segment. Current figures for July were not initially available on Friday. The reason for this, in addition to the significantly increased demand, partly due to the 9-euro ticket, is also the current high level of sick leave, which, however, does not only affect Deutsche Bahn.
The relaxation of the corona measures and the nine-euro ticket introduced in June caused the number of passengers in the second quarter of this year to increase by 74 percent compared to the same period last year, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Friday based on user data automatically collected from the transport companies. Compared to the first quarter of the year, the number of passengers has grown by 46 percent.
With the nine-euro ticket, people also covered longer distances, the data suggests. The transport performance of the local railways measured in passenger kilometers more than doubled (113 percent) within a year. 21 percent more passengers traveled with trams and light rail vehicles than in the previous quarter and 48 percent more than in the same quarter of the previous year. The growth was therefore lower than in rail transport.
Deutsche Bahn punctuality rating Destatis
